B-Type Omnibus - MiniArt

[Andy Moore]

MiniArt have a announced a new tool B-Type Omnibus, so we've finally got a replacement for the old Airfix kit

 

 

Glad it's MiniArt who've done it, rather than Roden or ICM

 

Andy

[Kingsman]

Just found the message from MiniArt in my inbox too.

 

Woo hoo..............  Been a looooong time coming.  Hopes for the lorry version too, if MiniArt follow their usual pattern of variants.  Pigeon loft??  Did the Army use the charabanc version too?  I wouldn't put it past them to do the civil version. 

 

I imagine that we'll see matching figure set(s) too from MiniArt and possibly some of the figure people.

[Kingsman]

More 3D renders here: https://miniart-models.com/products/39001-b-type-military-omnibus/

 

Looks really good.  I can foresee many builds of this appearing on this forum.

[solastcentury]

Wow, thanks for the heads up on this, looks great.

[McNab]

oh yes, very much looking forward to building this and probably more than one variant. I did build an Airfix one in 2018, adding more detail and using real wood etc... but this kit looks really good. And yes, I like the idea of further versions ie pigeon loft, lorry, etc being produced as DA mentions. 

[Selwyn]

Must say the chassis look very "metallic,"  They were actually made of wood in real life!

 

Selwyn

[Orso]

If so it looks like it was covered with metal. It looks like rust on the chassis:

https://blog.ltmuseum.co.uk/2013/11/27/b-type-restoration-material/

[dcrfan]

The announcement is fantastic.  Miniart is really pushing the traditional boundaries.

 

The chassis above certainly looks like metal.

[Andy Moore]

9 hours ago, Selwyn said:

Must say the chassis look very "metallic,"  They were actually made of wood in real life!

 

7 hours ago, Orso said:

If so it looks like it was covered with metal.

 

The chassis was wood, and was indeed covered with sheet steel.

 

 

Some more CAD images of the model

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andy

[Paul H]

That looks stunning!  Would also be great for a civilian diorama with ICM's Renault London taxi.

[Kingsman]

Praying to the modelling Gods, and noting that MiniArt have a teasing habit of showing other forthcoming kits on the boxart of new releases, their recent announcement of a Russian railway flatcar shows the front of an Austin armoured car on the next wagon.  Hers's hoping.................... There's a lot of scope for more WW1 softskin stuff from imaginitive manufacturers.

[Portaler]

Would totally love to see an "Andy job" done on this one !! Very unique !!

[Kingsman]

More photos of the completed model on the MiniArt site here: https://miniart-models.com/products/39001-b-type-military-omnibus/

 

Looking good.  I do find myself wondering whether, in this multi-media kit world, the inclusion of real wood parts like the side planking is a realsitic prospect.  On the real vehicle I'm guessing the planks were unpainted on the inside.

 

[Kingsman]

First listing seen today on eBay.  £60+.  It will get cheaper.  None of my regular stores have it yet, not even the one in Kiev just down the road from the factory - so to speak.

[Andy Moore]

As predicted, Miniart have announced a civil version

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andy

[Graeme]

Ok, I'll open the can of worms...what colour should it be? Miniart say Khaki?

[Kingsman]

Ah yes.  That can of Worms, Wriggly, GS, Mk1, Modeller argument for the use of!

 

This question comes up a lot.  In official documents the colour is often referred-to simply as "Service Colour", which helps not a lot.  There was no codification of paints inthe WW1 era and pre-mixed manufactured paint essentially did not then exist.  Most paint was mixed up from a linseed oil base with a drying agent such as Shellac, white lead and coloured pigment powders according to a "recipe".  None of the WW1 colour recipes seem to have survived or have yet been discovered.  It didn't keep well and would be batch-mixed and used pretty much immediately.  And this was being done at very many different factories and depots, so the actual colour will have varied much.  Paints of the era had a satin finish as the ability to make high gloss and flat matt didn't come about until the 1930's.  The Type B buses would have been repainted locally so the colour mix is even less certain and might even have been a French or Belgian mix available locally.

 

We get wrapped around the axle about what shade of colour "khaki" is, and then confuse the issue by talking about "khaki drab" (drab in US parlance simply means matt), "khaki brown" and "khaki green" like the British WW2 Khaki Green 3.  Khaki is described as a light shade of brown with a yellowish tinge.  But is one of the most abused and misunderstood colour names, often being used interchangeably with brown and tan.  You only have to look at surviving "khaki" uniforms to see a huge variety of shades from buff to greens.  The only known-for-certain surviving original WW1 "khaki" paint on a complete vehicle is the MkIV tank in the Royal Museum of the Army in Brussels.  But if you look that up online you will see that photographs vary widely in shade according to the light, the lens, camera settings and possibly film stock if taken with "wet" film.  And then of course we come to monitor colour shift and individual colour perception..................     Sometimes it appears brown, sometimes green, most often somewhere in between.  It is also believed that the large MkVIII tank model at Bovington is still in original factory colour, which is a very different colour to the repainted full-size tank it sits next to.

 

Bottom line is this.  No-one knows with any certainty.  Anyone who says they do cannot produce any evidence to back up the assertion or is basing their assertion on flawed information and assumptions.  So it is essentially impossible to say what is right and what is wrong.

 

AK Interactive have a 3-shade modulation set for British WW1 "khaki brown", AK4040.  On my MkIV tank I used Ammo MIGs Clay Brown 79 with a brown wash.  But these are very earthy brown colours and most preserved British WW1 soft-skin vehicles are painted in a greener shade - but browner than MiniArt's very green interpretation.  Again, you can find pictures on line.  There are a couple of Type B buses and lorries.

 

If I had to pick a colour, I think I might plump for Vallejo's Model Air interpretation of the early WW2 Khaki Green 3 as seen here on a WW2 Bedford OXA (the lighter colour) taken in daylight.  This was descibed as a noticeably brown shade of green.